Vase 1884

Editor: Here we have an 1884 porcelain vase by Crown Derby, currently residing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The floral motifs are just beautiful. All those layers make it seem almost jewel-encrusted! What can you tell me about its production? Curator: The vase screams materiality. Notice the intricate labor involved. Porcelain itself—a carefully crafted material requiring specialized skills and technology of firing, and glazing. Consider what that labor means during the industrial revolution of the 19th Century. Editor: It definitely looks incredibly time-consuming and meticulous. But why so much gold? Curator: Precisely! Think of gold, not just as decoration, but as a material expression of wealth and power. The burgeoning middle class sought such displays of opulence, blurring the line between art and craft, because there was mass-production here and high craftsmanship applied simultaneously. Were pieces like these aimed at expressing personal taste or at accumulating social capital? Editor: So it's both beautiful and a status symbol, right? How was Crown Derby able to manufacture them on a large scale while preserving those highly elaborate decorations? Curator: That tension is key. The production lines might be somewhat systematized for the sake of business but a highly-skilled craftsperson decorated each and every of them individually and they took pride in doing so, the individuality made the pieces stand out, it seems. Are those techniques celebrated today, or are these now deemed "low" art? Editor: I never considered how something could be so beautiful and still caught up in these sorts of historical material conflicts. That is definitely something that will change how I approach objects from now on. Curator: Yes, indeed. Looking through this material lens we started to see an object transformed from an aesthetic jewel to a complex cultural document.